La 'stanza intelligente' del design The ‘smart room’ of Design

With the ‘positivist’ slogan of ‘Better City, Better Life’, China has invited the world to share his faith in the possibilities of growth and improvement for the future. But since 2002, when Shanghai was selected to host the Expo, to 2010, which is the year of the Expo opening, the socio-economic worldwide scenario underwent substantial transformations. Therefore many of the certainties at the base of the cultural project of the Shanghai Expo, seemed no more incisive, necessary and perhaps possible. It is in such circumstances that next International Expo (in 2015 in Milan) has been announced, passing from the motto of Shanghai ‘Better City – Better Life’ to the motto of Milan ‘Feeding the Planet – Energy for Life’: from the euphoric feeling of omnipotence of the emerging countries, to the sense of frustration of the West which recognizes their limitations, but without knowing if and how to overcome them. Within the Design debate, these two feelings – of omnipotence and frustration – are not only the results of contemporary society, but also the boundaries of an operational space where the extremes are: the exploration of all possible interrelations between man/nature and technology, and the correction of all the failures caused by the mature capitalist processes of production. According to a design vision, the two Expos, the one of Shanghai and the one of Milan, both embody such extremes: each one heads towards a sort of utopia – according to the etymological meaning of ‘non place’ (to go!) The feeling for designers (and also for those who produce, manage, consume) is to be in a kind of ‘operating’ void, waiting for a possible drift towards one or the other utopia. Such feeling is well expressed in the last Biennale of Architecture in Venice (2012): its special theme – proposed and implemented by the curator David Chipperfield – was precisely the search for a possible ‘Common Ground’ for sharing ideas and actions away from any dichotomy, as well as from absolutism and singularity (and thus from the extremes). Among all, the Pavilion which could be considered more emblematic of this approach was perhaps the one of the United States entitled ‘Spontaneous Interventions: Design Actions for the Common Good’. The exhibition collected 124 projects by architects, designers, artists and ‘ordinary citizens’, whose theme was the objective of a positive change in (local) urban environments, through the direct participation of the users. This project fully embodies the reading that Jean Baudrillard did of North American society (1986) as the place of the achieved utopia. The described projects tell about a simple and (apparently) e≠ective design approach, which doesn’t need to be justified by any upstream theoretical construct. And, overall, they describe a dfferent way of conceiving Design, embodying two emblematic contemporary trends: participation and self-production. In particular, ‘participation’ is developed within the broadcasting of information technologies: where the web has changed the concept of community, making it not anymore related to a physical place, but to an homogeneous group of people sharing knowledge (as interests, culture, activities). It is still the web to determine the process of ‘rhizomatic’ dissemination of knowledge, in accordance with a linear and horizontal generation, where there isn’t any chance to locate the source. According to this, it is rising not only a di≠erent practice – where the ‘knots’ can be potentially (and simultaneously) designers, manufacturers, operators and users of knowledge – but also, it is being generated a different ethics (and aesthetics). Anderson (2012) describes this occurrence as the third revolution of the makers. Within such horizontal processes, what is the role of designers? What is the possible disciplinary autonomy of Design? While recognizing that the ‘places of spontaneity’ can be also the ‘places of opportunity’, such questions also introduce a challenge to design and overcome that ‘operative void’ opened between the two great visions/utopias generated by the feeling of ‘omnipotence’ and the feeling of ‘frustration’.